House fails to override Trump’s vetoes of two Republican bills

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House on Thursday failed to override President Donald Trump’s veto of two GOP-sponsored bills — a sign of the president’s continued grip on the party even amid some cracks in the façade.

The House voted to sustain Trump’s veto of a bill to make it easier for rural communities in southeast Colorado to pay the federal government to complete a pipeline for delivering clean water. The vote was 248-177, short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the vetoes.

The House also voted to sustain veto of a bill to allow the Miccosukee Tribe to expand the lands it manages in the Florida Everglades. The vote was 236-188, also short of the two-thirds threshold.

In a sign of how uncontroversial they were, the bills unanimously passed the House by voice vote in July. They then cleared the Senate by voice vote in December.

Congress has only successfully overridden presidential vetoes 112 times in history, according to the U.S. Senate. The last successful override was when Congress voted to override Trump’s veto of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act in his first term.

In vetoing the water pipeline bill, Trump cited the project’s “massive” $1.3 billion price tag and cost overruns from years of delays.

“Enough is enough,” Trump said in his veto message to Congress. “My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies. Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts and restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the Nation.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., suggested his veto was retaliation against her, however, as one of four Republicans who defied the president and backed a discharge petition forcing a vote to release the government’s Epstein files.

Trump has also expressed anger at Gov. Jared Polis and other Colorado Democratic leaders over the imprisonment of Tina Peters, a former county clerk there who promoted false claims about the 2020 election and was convicted in connection with a voting system’s security breach. Trump issued a symbolic pardon of Peters, but it has no effect because she was convicted under state, not federal, law.

Boebert told reporters this week she wasn’t frustrated with Trump personally but pushed back on his concerns about costs, saying he wasn’t told all of the facts. Trump, she said, is “very frustrated with poorly run Democrat states, and certainly Colorado is a sanctuary state.”

“I would be very saddened to know if it was retaliatory to the very conservative districts who voted for President Trump in three elections. I don’t believe that he is directly attacking them,” she added. “I believe that some folks … just didn’t explain the numbers correctly to him. … This isn’t something that is costly. I’m fiscally conservative and would never introduce a bill that is costing billions of dollars to the taxpayer.”

Trump has also clashed with the Miccosukee Tribe over its opposition to a migrant detention center in the Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” that opened last year. That was a big reason for the veto of the Miccosukee bill, authored by Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., who represents the area.

“Despite seeking funding and special treatment from the Federal Government, the Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” Trump wrote in his veto message last month.

“My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding projects for special interests,” he said, “especially those that are unaligned with my Administration’s policy of removing violent criminal illegal aliens from the country.”

The vetoes were the first Trump has issued since taking office last year. He issued 10 vetoes during his first term.